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An interview with Christopher Owens of Girls

post brought to you by: dyson

Photo credit: Christopher Owens

I’ve been in love with the Girls album Album since I can remember. Call me lucky or in the right place at the right time, but here I am interviewing Christopher Owens in the coming days of the new Girls EP Broken Dreams Club.

I don’t even know what to say. The more I’ve gotten to know Christopher Owens the more I’m intrigued by him. The music he writes is heavily based on relationships and well, girls. But my god is he one of the most interesting/intriguing guys I’ve ever interacted with.

Look forward to the release of Broken Dreams Club on November 22. But for now, have a read with the amazing Christopher Owens.

An interview with Christopher Owens of Girls

dyson:What’s the one thing that you’re proudest of with the new record?
christopher: The way it sounds. I guess the quality of the sound is what i mean. We’ve been a band that’s learned from scratch, and we’ve gotten to a point where we can make a fancy record all by ourselves, and we’re pretty proud of that. Also the different musicians that we wrangled in for it, pretty awesome dudes.

dyson: Instantly I can hear the sonic difference on ‘Heartbreaker’ from the tracks on Album. Aside from the studio impact, who/what can you credit to that difference?
christopher: It just comes from the practice and the quality of the gear we got to use, also working in a perfectly quiet room makes a huge difference. The last record was made with the complete opposite set of circumstances. Jr produced it and a guy named JJ engineered it with him and they have good taste and did a good job. We’ve all gotten better at playing our instruments from touring all the time too.

dyson: We’ve briefly spoke of leaked records and how it’s almost unavoidable. Who do you think suffers the most when it happens? The artist? Label? Producer? Engineer? Fans?
christopher: The engineers don’t because they get paid for making the record, not from the sales of the record. Other than that everyone does, but we’re not gonna cry about it, and we’ll adapt. But you know there’s a reason that we make artwork to go with records, there’s a reason everyone who’s ever made records has, it enhances the record. There’s also a quality control loss, mp3’s don’t sound as good etc… and it’s obvious how the label and the artists suffer but it doesn’t do any good to whine about. The whole thing is just changing.

dyson: There’s a definite visual style that seems to really appeal to you. Let’s take both album covers as an example. Can words describe what that style is?
christopher: No, i can’t. I think i would just sound like a jerk if i tried to too. Just take it at face value i guess. It’s pretty straight forward and basically just stuff we like. I thought it would be neat for the albums to look like a set.

dyson: Is music your favorite form of art? You seem like an artist who likes to dabble in a lot of different things.christopher: No movies are. You get everything in movies, music, audio, visuals, stories. But if you’re talking about art for me to make I really only make music and the art for the records.

dyson: I’m not one to break down lyrics, but I can’t help to notice a theme of relationships and love in the songs you write. Not a rare theme, but you seem to do it in a way that really resonates. Have your relationships been particularly rough in your life?
christopher: Some have, some haven’t. You know a lot of those songs were written at the same time, and i don’t really feel like that anymore. But it’s important to record these things. A song can be great to someone ten years from now without knowing anything about who wrote it and without it’s relationship to their body of work. One day someone will hear one of these songs by itself and they’ll love it and and that’s why they should be recorded.

dyson: I’ll take ‘Laura’ for example (and thank you for opening Hollywood Bowl with it) I always refer to it as the perfect relationship song. Too personal to ask if that was based off of a past experience?
christopher: Laura was just a friend of mine, that song is about friendship not an ex girlfriend or anything like that. But yeah she’s a real person.

dyson: I’m sorry if you’ve explained this a million times over, but for my sake, how did you land on Girls – Album?christopher: Out of the blue 🙂

If you haven’t already downloaded ‘Heartbreaker’, then take a gander at my sidebar and do it. If you want to pre-order the LP like I did then do it here.

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on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 11:22 am and is filed under dyson posts, interviews.
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